Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Can we prevent further global warming by manmade CO2 photodissociation? Could people insert on top of the power plants a big box where UV beams are thrown at the CO2? There would be CO and O or C and O2 left on the atmosphere. Both cases are a solution for earth’s climate stabilisation.

Adela,

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the interesting question. Is this for a science project. It seems like one that could be calculated in the first instance and possibly tested if the numbers worked out reasonably. If you figured how many watts (power) of UV light would be required to break up a kg of CO2 per second and multiply that by the average amount of CO2 produced per second at a power plant, could enough CO2 be broken up to make a difference? Sounds like a great research project.